496 pages, cloth/hardback, 298 x 245 mm, 225 colour illustrations
PRICE: £60.00
ISBN: 978 1 904288 08 4
On 10 August 1854 an Act of Parliament was passed establishing the National Gallery of Ireland. Ten years later it opened with great fanfare, the displays mainly of plaster casts, baroque altarpieces, copies of Old Masters and a room of watercolours. It is now a collection of world renown, with masterpieces by Caravaggio, Uccello, Vermeer, Poussin, Rubens, Velázquez, Reynolds, Osborne, Hamilton and others.
Here the gallery’s story is told for the first time. Poverty, misfortune, good luck, moments of great generosity, drama, cowardice, and the idiosyncratic foresight and taste of twelve Directors have contributed to this story. A rich archive of minute books and letters reveal the struggle even to construct the original building and make an initial collection from nothing. The immeasurable role of generous donors like Milltown, Lane, Chester Beatty, Shaw, Beit, Mahon and the Society of Jesus is also considered.
‘A Time & a Place: Two centuries of Irish social life' focuses, through the art of their time, on Irish people engaged in recreational activities across the last two centuries. The book is arranged thematically, covering areas and subjects such as sport, music and dance, visits to the beach, religious observance and pilgrimage, theatre, circus, calendar customs, fairs and markets, pubs, clubs and parades. More
Celebrating the Beckett Centenary. Awarded third prize by The Art Newspaper/Axa Art Prize for best catalogue of the year published in the UK - "admired for the quantity of new material it presented about Beckett himself and the worlds of literature and visual arts". More
This first volume cataloguing the Irish painters in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin covers more than 220 paintings from the late 17th century to the early 19th century, including figures such as George Barret, James Barry, Hugh Douglas Hamilton, William Hickey, Nathaniel Hone, Charles Jervas, James Latham, Thomas Roberts and Martin Archer Shee. More
The exceptional collection of miniatures held by the National Gallery of Ireland is for the first time made widely known with this publication. With an essay on the history and technique of miniature painting in Ireland, where it flourished particularly well, the book contains an astonishing variety of miniatures in watercolour as well as enamel, made for all sorts of purposes – lovers’ keepsakes, memorials of great men, portraits of great actresses (like Hone’s fine miniature of Sarah Siddons). Paul Caffrey is a lecturer at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. More